By Eric Zuesse
An update to
How Both Putin and Biden Bungled in Ukraine
By , April 04, 2022
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On April 4th, Russia’s RT headlined “Russia and Ukraine trade accusations over Bucha civilian deaths (TIMELINE): After footage of dead civilians in the Ukrainian city of Bucha emerged, the West immediately pointed the finger at Moscow”, and included such items as, on April 2nd,
One clip published and later deleted by Ukrainian military commander Sergey Korotkih showed Ukrainian troops in Bucha discussing engagement rules. Korotkih, formerly a citizen of Belarus, is an open neo-Nazi who went to Ukraine back in 2014 to fight in the ranks of the notorious Azov Battalion. In Russia, Korotkih is wanted on multiple murder charges. One of the fighters can be heard asking if it was OK to shoot at “guys not wearing blue armbands” identifying Ukrainian soldiers. The response was an affirmative “you bet”.
This links through to this uploaded cellphone video evidence recording that conversation, physically onsite at Bucha, as Ukraine’s forces were coming into the area to inspect and evaluate the situation and to record and display the extent of their victory there.
Furthermore, on April 4th, Russia’s Ministry of Defense alleged that:
“All units of Russian troops completely withdrew from Bucha on March 30, and these shots [videos about Bucha that were distributed to the press] appeared on the 4th day after that, when SBU officers and representatives of Ukrainian TV arrived in the area”
If this statement is true, this would prove (even without there having been the necessary independent international investigation into Ukraine’s allegations on the matter) that Ukraine’s accusations were, in fact, bald-faced lies.
If Russia’s allegations in that Bucha matter are true, then, of course, the propaganda-value of the ‘news’-reports by CNN and others regarding it will reduce with time, and perhaps even become the enduring scandal here — yet another scandal of U.S.-and-allied ‘news’-media being actually instead propaganda-media. Trusting Western reports regarding Russia might then turn out to be even stupider than it was before.
Putin’s reputation in the U.S.-and-allied countries might then not suffer long-term harm from the Bucha matter. Putin’s approval-rating within Russia, itself, has risen from his low of around 60% in August 2021 to above 80% now, mainly as a result of soaring from 71% just before the February 24th invasion.
However, what’s far more important going forward will be the public opinion of him outside Russia, in the countries that never really stopped their Cold War against Russia after the Soviet Union’s 1991 end. America’s regime-change-in-Russia campaign will almost certainly not succeed by driving Putin’s approval-rating inside Russia down to where, say, Joe Biden’s in America is. But if America takes an alternative approach, such as a military coup, or a blitz invasion of Russia, perhaps the people who rule in America might ultimately succeed (in which case what happened to Ukraine after Obama conquered it in 2014 might happen, some day, to Russia itself).
The South Front Report
Then, later on April 4th, the best news-site on the war, South Front, bannered “NEW EVIDENCES SHED LIGHT ON ALLEGED MASSACRE IN BUCHA, KIEV REGION (VIDEO, PHOTO)”, and reported that,
Today, there are more interesting videos from Bucha shared by the Ukrainian military which may help to shed light on what did really happen in the town left by the Russian troops on March 30.
On April 2, a day before Ukrainian “journalists” came to Bucha to stage the horrific scenes on the streets, the National Police of Ukraine published a video of the mop up operation in Bucha.
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The footage confirmed that:
- there were no corpses laying on the streets. Not a single civilian confirmed that any mass shootings [had occurred] in the city.
- Ukrainian demining teams who entered the town right after the Russian withdrawal had no work to do. They are seen walking on the streets along with civilians. Not a single mine left by the Russians was shown on the video.
- Servicemen of the National Guard asked some civilians if they needed help, none of them replied asking for any immediate assistance, confirming that they are fine.
Only one man is seen killed in his car. It is not clear how did his death happen. Another victim was obviously a servicemen of one of the warring sides killed in clashes, whose corps[e] is laying [lying] near a destroyed military equipment.
One of [the] Ukrainian “patriots” made a comment on behaviour of the “Russian invaders”. After his own compatriots told Russian servicemen about his acute social awareness, Russian military checked his apartment but found only flags and a bunch of Ukrainian symbols. To add some drama to his case, the man claimed that [a] Russian soldier took him out “to kill him”, but suddenly changed his mind and brought the man to the military commander. The brave patriot only had a short peaceful conversation with Russian servicemen, with no tortures. …
This video of the National Police of Ukraine, shot presumably on April 1 or earlier, does not really correspond to what the Ukrainian media published on April 3, trumpeting to the whole world that the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation allegedly carried out a “mass massacre” of civilians.
As more photos are shared from the spot, more proves [proofs], that the scene was staged, appear.
As the main video proof from Bucha raised a lot of suspicions and was quickly disclaimed, it was accompanied by more fake photos allegedly made in the town.
Unfortunately, these attempts are even less effective and are evident lies. For example, notorious Advisor to the Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Arestovich published the photo of a woman tortured in Mariupol last week by Ukrainian Azov militants, claiming that she was a victim tortured by the Russians. The photo was later deleted but was widely spread by the Ukrainian MSM, who even did not come together if it was in Gostomel or in Bucha. The Ukrainian media are trying their best to gain as much hype as possible, lying on any matter. …
The Al Jazeera Report
However, at around the same time, Al Jazeera, which is owned by the Thani family of U.S.-allied Qatar, headlined “Bucha killings: ‘The world cannot be tricked anymore’,” and showed Ukraine-government-supporting alleged “witnesses” who alleged that Russian soldiers had perpetrated a “massacre” there, and urged international war-crimes trials against Russia’s leaders (and nothing against America’s leaders).
No one has — at least in any prominent ‘news’-medium — urged any war-crimes trial against any American leader: not against George W. Bush, nor against Obama, nor against Biden: no American leader at all.
Washington Post and AP Reports
Yet later in the day, America’s AP bannered “Biden: Putin should face war crimes trial for Bucha killings”, and an editorial in Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post headlined “The Bucha massacre should prompt a forceful response” and said that “Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the civilian executions ‘genocide,’ and President Biden declared that Mr. Putin is ‘a war criminal.’ Those words will find meaning only with a determined prosecution.”
As-of day’s-end on the 4th, it seemed that there were corpses in Bucha, but there was no public information yet on the identities of the dead, nor on how many were civilians, how many were Ukrainian soldiers, and how many were Russian soldiers, and the ways in which each of those individuals had become killed — much less on whether any legal grounds yet existed for asserting that any “war crimes” had been perpetrated by anyone there.
And the Ukrainian account of the Bucha matter was full of faked ‘interpretations’ of the ‘evidence’ they were providing.
Nonetheless, on the morning of April 4th, Washington’s The Hill had bannered “Macron, EU official join calls for further sanctions over ‘clear’ indications of war crimes in Bucha”.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s next book (soon to be published) will be AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change.
6 April 2022
Source: www.globalresearch.ca